The Clos Lucé, Leonardo da Vinci’s Château in Amboise, France
It is not generally known that Leonardo da Vinci spent his final years in Amboise, France, where he was honored by François I with his own little château within walking distance of the Royal Palace. Some twenty years ago, Martine and I visited the Loire where we saw the châteaux at Chambord, Chenanceau, Chaumont, Villandry, Azay-le-Rideau, Cheverny, and Amboise.
We based ourselves in Amboise and spent time at François I’s château of Amboise. We were startled to see in the château’s chapel of St. Florentin the tomb of the great Italian artist and thinker:
Tomb of Leonardo da Vinci at Amboise
We then found out about Leonardo’s nearby home and visited it. Leonardo had spent many thankless years with Lodovico Sforza, the ruler of Milan, without really being appreciated for his talents. It is good to know that, in his last years, Leonardo found a ruler who did not mistreat him. In fact, Giorgio Vasari says that François I cradled Leonardo’s head on his deathbed. Whether or not he did, Leonardo died will full honors on May 2, 1519..
Why do Americans shower their billionaires with a level of adoration normally reserved for deities and saints? I think back to the Medicis and the Borgias during the Italian Renaissance. As J. H. Plumb wrote, “Commercial capitalism, struggling the the framework of feudalism, learned, through Italy, not only how to express itself in art and learning, but also how to make an art of life itself.”
Not so today, however! Donald Trump has given us golden toilet bowls, ornate golf courses, and tried to take away our democracy. Elon Musk managed to convince thousands of Americans that he was a genius—until he spent $44 billion buying Twitter and running it into the ground. After his latest anti-Semitic tirade, I think even most Tesla owners are rethinking their allegiances.
I cannot think of a billionaire today who has done anything but engage in self-aggrandizement. Instead of a Renaissance, we are now in a period that can only be described as Anti-Renaissance.
What ever happened to patronage of the arts? Oh, it still exists at the millionaire level; but not among the Trumps, Musks, and Bezoses of this world. The think the last billionaire to show any moves in this direction was Bill Gates of Microsoft fame.
One of the fiercest deserts on Earth is only about five hours northeast of where I live. I am referring to Death Valley. It’s not actually a valley despite its name: It’s actually a graben, referring to a piece of the Earth’s crust that is shifted downward in comparison to adjacent pieces of crust which have shifted upwards.
Dry and desolate though it may be, it is also strangely beautiful. But only if you visit it at the right time of year, namely winter. If you visit in summer, the temperatures push upwards of 120-130° Fahrenheit (49-55° Celsius).
Martine and I visited in 2008, when these pictures were taken. We stayed at the motel at Stovepipe Wells in January 2008. The rooms were excellent, but the food in the restaurant was pretty dreadful. Who ever thought of dumping old gravy into the soup?
Ubehebe Crater
I would love to go back to Death Valley sometime, perhaps this time staying at Furnace Creek rather than Stovepipe Wells.
We could also visit Lone Pine, one of my favorite towns along U.S. 395, where there is a museum of film westerns and some surprisingly good places to eat.
The following is a dream that poet Joy Harjo, a Creek/Mvskoke Indian, had when she was a child and it was feared that she had polio. The excerpt comes from her book Crazy Brave: A Memoir.
It was shortly after the polio scare that I began to dream the alligator dream.
I am a young girl, between four and five years old. It’s early in the morning. I delight in my feet touching the ground and in the plant beings who line the trail to the river. I breathe in playful energy from small, familiar winds as I walk to get water for the family. The winds appear to part the tall reeds through which I walk with my water jar.
An alligator whips me suddenly to the water and pulls me under. I struggle, and then I am gone. My passing from earth is a quick choke. To my mourning family, my life has been tragically ended. They did not see that I entered an underwater story to live with alligators and become one of them.
I believe now that I had the beginnings of polio. The alligators took it away. It is possible. The world is mysterious.
One of the most difficult challenges in life is finding the proper balance in a hotly contested situation. Such, for example, is the case in the conflict between Israel and Gaza. I have not weighed in primarily because I have my doubts about the actions of both sides.
Some people get angry about any “Both Sides Are Wrong” argument, electing to stand 100% behind one of the combatants. Where I myself stand is more like a sliding scale. The percentages below are to be interpreted as percent to blame:
Hamas – 95% wrong. Their attack was totally reprehensible.
Bibi Netanyahu – 60% wrong. The enemy is Hamas, not the whole Arab world.
West Bank Settlers – 80% wrong. Their land grabs are indefensible.
Hezbollah – 50% wrong
Biden Foreign Policy on the Conflict – 30% wrong.
Gaza Civilians – 10% wrong. To the extent that they support Hamas.
Israeli Civilians – 10% wrong. To the extent they support West Bank land grabs.
From week to week, these percentages change. I would not shed a tear is Hamas were wiped out to a man, though I feel that our 100% support for Israel ignores the innocent Palestinians who deserve better.
Truth is not something that suddenly dawns when you’ve read an irate tweet or Facebook post. It is something that you arrive at in time if you have an open mind. Until such time as that happens, it is no shame to decline to state an opinion.
As Thanksgiving Day approaches, millions of families will confront their weird uncles whose political beliefs are 180° away from yours. What makes it worse is that we are living during a period in which people take a position and vociferously defend it, thinking it is right because, after all, they believe in it. And their beliefs are, of course, sacred.
Looking back over my life, I do not recall ever having been convinced by anyone’s contrary political, religious, or other opinions. It seems that our times are not conducive to producing facts or cogent reasons. We can produce a great deal of heated discussions full of vituperation.
I have always been close to people whose opinions were contrary to mine. It began with my father, who supported George C. Wallace for President and voted a straight American Independent ticket. (I got back at him by dating a pretty young Black pediatrician with a Harvard MD).
Now I live with a woman whom I love, but who is a Republican who listens to right-wing shock jocks on KABC Radio and who, in all probability, votes for Donald Trump. (If you do not know me, Trump is a candidate I would have no compunction about stabbing in a vital organ with a knife liberally smeared with dog shit.)
Do I talk politics with Martine? No. Do I talk politics with my friends? Not if I can help it, even though my friends have similar beliefs like my own.
Life is too short to wreck it by engaging in political discussions that go nowhere. And nowhere is where most of them go.
So eat your turkey and mashed potatoes and present a smiley-face to relatives who want to establish a new Reich in Washington.
Here is a very short poem by Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796) just in time for Thanksgiving. The “Selkirk Grace,” as it is known, is usually recited before the first course is served at a Burns Night celebration.
Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.
You might want to say these words at your own Thanksgiving feast as you remember those whose hunger continues unabated, holiday or not.
The reputation of Philip Larkin seems to grow year by year, to the extent that he is considered one of the best British poets of the last century. Here is one of my favorites among his poems:
This Be the Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
“Pinkville” is the name that the soldiers who fought on the ground gave to the villages around My Lai, site of the 1968 massacre in which hundreds of Vietnamese civilians were killed in 1968. It is an area well described by Tim O’Brien, whose books on the Vietnam War from the point of view of the troops on the ground are probably the best books to read about the war as it was fought.
O’Brien started in 1975 with his own experiences in the war, set forth in a book entitled If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home. He asks “Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely from having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.”
And that’s exactly what O’Brien does. The stories are all true in his first book, with only the names of characters being changed.
Then, in 1978, he wrote Going After Cacciato, the first of two fictional works about the war. This was followed in 1990 by The Things They Carried, which is my favorite of his books.
Whether writing fiction or straight memoir, O’Brien is a powerful writer. In If I Die in a Combat Zone, there is a chapter entitled “Step Lightly” about the different kinds of land mines used by the Viet Cong. The most horrifying of these is the Bouncing Betty:
The Bouncing Betty is feared most. It is a common mine. It leaps out of its nest in the earth, and when it hits its apex, it explodes, reliable and deadly. If a fellow is lucky and if the mine is in an old emplacement, having been exposed to the rains, he may notice its three prongs sticking out of the clay. The prongs serve as the Bouncing Betty’s firing device. Step on them, and the unlucky soldier will hear a muffled explosion ; that’s the initial charge sending the mine on its one-yard leap into the sky. The fellow takes another step and begins the next and his backside is bleeding and he’s dead. We call it “ol’ step and a half.”
I cannot help but think that that the literary reputation of Sir Walter Scott will continue to fade. After all, he can be diabolically difficult to read. His Guy Mannering: or The Astrologer (1815) is written in English, a broad Lowland Scots dialect, thieves cant, with numerous quotes in Latin, French, German, and Dutch.
Just the Scots itself can be challenging to most readers. The following terms were excerpted from the 20+ page glossary: aiblins, awmous, bestad, braw, camsteary, clanjamfray, eilding, fow, fremit, gumphion, niffer, sapperment, unco, and waf. In addition, my edition (Penguin) has some sixty pages of detailed end notes.
And yet I think that Scott is one of the finest novelists of the 19th century. The plot line of the book is a bit ridiculous. And there really isn’t a central character (not even Guy Mannering himself). At different times, the reader is confused whether to follow Mannering, Godfrey Bertram, Meg Merrilies, Vanbeest Brown, Dandy Dinmont (not a dog), or the eccentric lawyer Paulus Pleydell.
But if you are willing to take the trouble of trying to understand Scott, the rewards are great. He wrote so energetically, and his knowledge of Scots law is so impressive, and his language so vivid that the two weeks I spent reading the novel were an unalloyed pleasure from beginning to end. Even his descriptions of the wild landscape around Solway Firth are worthy of note:
Do you see that blackit and broken end of a shealing?—there my kettle boiled for forty years—there I bore twelve buirdly sons and daughters—where are they now?—where are the leaves that were on that auld ash-tree at Martinmas!—the west wind has made it bare—and I’m stripped too.—Do you see that saugh-tree?—it’s but a blackened rotten stump now—I’ve sat under it mony a bonnie summer afternoon, when it hung its gay garlands ower the poppling water.—I’ve sat there, and I’ve held you on my knee, Henry Bertram, and sung ye sangs of the auld barons and their bloody wars—it will ne’er be green again, and Meg Merrilies will never sing sangs mair, be they blithe or sad. But ye’ll no forget her, and ye’ll gar big upthe auld wa’s for her sake?—and let somebody live there that’s, ower gude to fear them of another warld—For if ever the dead came back amang the living. I’ll be seen in this glen mony a night after these crazed banes are in the mould.
Again, Scott is a difficult author, but I think demonstrably a great one.
Tarnmoor 
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